Games Journalism General

[Coolio55]

Remember the phil fish puff piece he did a while back? Sometimes his topics are interesting but he seems pretty stuck up and "in the clique".
Kinda like Extra Credits before they went full retard.

 

[Megaroad]

How do you guys feel about Super Bunnyhop?

Media Literacy and Game News

UPDATE: Oh God dammit there's typos. Special thanks to Jason Schreier (Kotaku,) Josh Harmon (EGM,) and Crash Course on Media Literacy: https://www.youtube.co...

www.youtube.com

The guy keeps from pushing politics in his videos. He believes some stuff I very much disagree with but never tries to push anything onto you.

He can be scattered a bit all over the place but he's fine.

 

[Judge Dredd]

There was an old magazine that I used to read that had a good concept when it came to reviews(Famitsu-lite basically). First there was the review text with pictures and what the game was, how it worked, standard stuff, then there was two textboxes for scores. The person that wrote the review then explained in ~1000 characters why he gave it a 0-10, then there was another box where someone that didn't write the review wrote his own ~1000 character opinion of the game and gave it his own independent score. They weren't weighed against each other, the one who wrote the review set the final score but there was always a second opinion.

There was a magazine I read that did something similar, though the "second opinion" was barely a paragraph and didn't have a score. PCGamer used to have a section called Devils Advocate which I ignored back in the day. In hindsight, it was a way to get politics into a games magazine without shitting themselves. That wouldn't happen these days.

The guy keeps from pushing politics in his videos. He believes some stuff I very much disagree with but never tries to push anything onto you.

I don't watch him. The stuff I have watched has been political, though that's likely my fault for only watching his videos when he makes a fool of himself. His recent video shilling for game unions was funny because everybody was wearing the same clothes, even wearing the exact same shirt in some cases.

 

[DoofComoose]

Remember the phil fish puff piece he did a while back? Sometimes his topics are interesting but he seems pretty stuck up and "in the clique".
Kinda like Extra Credits before they went full exceptional individual.

Yeah I mean that and having Jason in the video I posted earlier kind of gives me a good estimation of his beliefs but as long as he doesn't preach or push his bullshit at me then he can believe anything he fucking wants

edit:

There was a magazine I read that did something similar, though the "second opinion" was barely a paragraph and didn't have a score. PCGamer used to have a section called Devils Advocate which I ignored back in the day. In hindsight, it was a way to get politics into a games magazine without shitting themselves. That wouldn't happen these days.


I don't watch him. The stuff I have watched has been political, though that's likely my fault for only watching his videos when he makes a fool of himself. His recent video shilling for game unions was funny because everybody was wearing the same clothes, even wearing the exact same shirt in some cases.

I never minded that too much because sure it's politics but it's not wag your finger at viewer journalism like Kotaku and Polygon. So it might be for fitting to say I don't care if he talks politics and rather I care HOW he talks politics. Also do you actually disagree with gaming unions? Why so?

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

How do you guys feel about Super Bunnyhop?

Media Literacy and Game News

UPDATE: Oh God dammit there's typos. Special thanks to Jason Schreier (Kotaku,) Josh Harmon (EGM,) and Crash Course on Media Literacy: https://www.youtube.co...

www.youtube.com

The guy keeps from pushing politics in his videos. He believes some stuff I very much disagree with but never tries to push anything onto you.

Used to be a big fan of this guy. He got a lot of attention for being one of the first people to investigate the hell that was MGSV's development, which resulted in the initial video getting taken down by Konami. His investigative videos are legitimately amazing, since he actually checks for sources and makes everything digestible to the average viewer. The TellTale bankruptcy video is another good example.

Thing is, as time went on I started to realize that I fundamentally disagreed with him on certain subjects. I recall years ago on Facebook he posted that game journalists didn't have to be good at video games to be good journalists, but when he got people disagreeing with him he added that it shouldn't matter if they were just reporting video games, which I thought was disingenuous since the topic of games journalism is broader than simply reporting on video games. That, and sometimes his takes on certain games can be utterly wrong, like his video on Doom 2016 where he seemed incapable of ignoring the game's secrets and upgrade system and blamed the game for it.

Right now I'm in a weird position with him since he makes some damn good videos but I haven't liked his recent string of videos since I simply don't agree with his recent points. I didn't even watch this new one because I looked at the YouTube description and found that he had that Kotaku writer and I immediately realized it wasn't going to click with me.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Also do you actually disagree with gaming unions? Why so?

I don't have a strong opinion on unions. I think there's practical problems of trying to agree on and enforce a set of rules that can be applied intentionally to everything from indies to AAA. But I'm not a pro dev so I don't really have a horse in this race.

But neither do Zoe Quinn, Jim Sterling, Super Bunnyhop, game journalists, and all the other hacks pushing for dev unions.

I could (and should) leave it there, but let's go full Alex Jones. Look at all the people pushing for this, from the nobodies at ResetEra to lolcows like Jim Sterling, or even the people in the Super Bunnyhop video. What do they all have in common? Lefties, troons, and hipsters that are incapable of making real games and have nothing since the bottom fell out of the walking simulator market, or they are opinion writers who bet against gamergate and have lost their influence as result. Add in the union talk feeling about as genuine as kickvic allegation, the lack of any concrete plan for how the union would achieve it's goals, and all of the game journalist clique names that come up again and again, and I'm left with one paranoid conclusion. The former industry gatekeepers want their power back, and want to form a union so they can make people on their blacklist unemployable. Collecting "union dues" while doing nothing to earn it is a nice benefit as well. Even if I was pro-union, I wouldn't trust those people to run it.

 

[Miller]

Also do you actually disagree with gaming unions? Why so?

It's a bad idea. The people who are pushing for this aren't really in the business (they're mostly colored-hair communists who have never made an actual game, like the 2 people who made Sunset wanted to get paid every month for doing nothing), they want the gaming industry to turn into some kind of safe job like working for the government/state. Sure, the current situation is far from being great and crunch is bad but what they want isn't the solution.

 

[SiccDicc]

It's a bad idea. The people who are pushing for this aren't really in the business (they're mostly colored-hair communists who have never made an actual game, like the 2 people who made Sunset wanted to get paid every month for doing nothing), they want the gaming industry to turn into some kind of safe job like working for the government/state. Sure, the current situation is far from being great and crunch is bad but what they want isn't the solution.

Plus it'll likely push game companies into work for hire states where they can simply ignore union work and import programmers from foreign nations on visas at reduced pay, it doesn't help that it's already an oversaturated job market. It doesn't help the people afflicted, it's just another bullshit scenario that forces jobs across the border. Granted, it'd be state borders.

 

[Secret Asshole]

It is honestly a terrible idea. Programmers already have problems with outsourcing, unions will only make that ten times worse. You'll outsource most of your work, probably have 1 or 2 people clean it up. The expense of outsourcing is decreased because unions make everything more expensive. Also the taxes that have gone up most are payroll taxes, so labor costs already sucks. So you're compounding a problem.

Outsourcing for businesses is getting worse because the code they get back is terrible and it is actually getting more costly to do because you have to fix all the mistakes your cheap labor makes. If you unionize, you basically decrease this cost and outsourcing becomes more common again. Hence less jobs, means less money and less income.

Nobody ever fucking thinks this shit through.

 

[AnOminous]

It is honestly a terrible idea. Programmers already have problems with outsourcing, unions will only make that ten times worse. You'll outsource most of your work, probably have 1 or 2 people clean it up. The expense of outsourcing is decreased because unions make everything more expensive. Also the taxes that have gone up most are payroll taxes, so labor costs already sucks. So you're compounding a problem.

Outsourcing for businesses is getting worse because the code they get back is terrible and it is actually getting more costly to do because you have to fix all the mistakes your cheap labor makes. If you unionize, you basically decrease this cost and outsourcing becomes more common again. Hence less jobs, means less money and less income.

Nobody ever fucking thinks this shit through.

If a union is going to be any good at all, it has to be able to strike and, as importantly, be irreplaceable enough they can't just fire the lot of you and replace you with pajeets tomorrow. That means either you're so skilled that you can't be replaced, or badass enough you can literally beat the shit out of anyone who dares to scab.

And your strike has to actually matter. It has to cause things to go immediately to shit so fast that it's a huge priority to get you back to work, or you have to be able to weather how long it takes before the impact of you striking starts to hit.

This is why you have a Writers Guild for TV and why a garbage collector strike works. The Writers Guild is packed with people who are privileged enough that they can sit out an entire season and wait for their strike to take effect while ratings tank and popular shows turn to shit. They can't really stop scabbing but the kind of people who scab aren't going to do as good a job. Suffering eventually kicks in. You eventually get a deal.

And garbagemen going on strike immediately turns the city into a reeking hellhole. If you're a politician your constituents are pissed off. And if you're a garbage union, you're probably mobbed up as all fuck and anyone who scabs is getting his kneecaps broken. They have to pay you off to get you back to work. Or they'll lose their jobs.

Programmers are a ridiculously fluid population and they aren't all doing the same thing, and you can't convince them all to go on strike anyway. Many of them hate unions on principle. There is no shortage of pajeets or shitty programmers who can churn out garbage code that will (just barely) get the job done, and the very skilled are as likely to be working on their own personal projects in the first place, or embedding themselves so thoroughly into a company that they can personally dictate terms, and they don't need a fucking union to do that. They can just threaten they'll personally leave.

And here we get games journalism. How the fuck is this something that can be unionized in any meaningful way? This is like ass polyps getting together and threatening to leave your asshole unless you pay them. Fuck you, leave already. The only reason these useless fucking hacks even have a "job" at all is their willingness to work for pretty much nothing except "recognition" and even with that, everyone fucking hates them. They could all die in a ditch and nobody would care in the least. If they all went on strike they'd be replaced with identical blue haired fuckwits by tomorrow who would be just as willing to churn out SJW pablum for nothing.

 

[Secret Asshole]

If a union is going to be any good at all, it has to be able to strike and, as importantly, be irreplaceable enough they can't just fire the lot of you and replace you with pajeets tomorrow. That means either you're so skilled that you can't be replaced, or badass enough you can literally beat the shit out of anyone who dares to scab.

And your strike has to actually matter. It has to cause things to go immediately to shit so fast that it's a huge priority to get you back to work, or you have to be able to weather how long it takes before the impact of you striking starts to hit.

This is why you have a Writers Guild for TV and why a garbage collector strike works. The Writers Guild is packed with people who are privileged enough that they can sit out an entire season and wait for their strike to take effect while ratings tank and popular shows turn to shit. They can't really stop scabbing but the kind of people who scab aren't going to do as good a job. Suffering eventually kicks in. You eventually get a deal.

And garbagemen going on strike immediately turns the city into a reeking hellhole. If you're a politician your constituents are pissed off. And if you're a garbage union, you're probably mobbed up as all fuck and anyone who scabs is getting his kneecaps broken. They have to pay you off to get you back to work. Or they'll lose their jobs.

Programmers are a ridiculously fluid population and they aren't all doing the same thing, and you can't convince them all to go on strike anyway. Many of them hate unions on principle. There is no shortage of pajeets or shitty programmers who can churn out garbage code that will (just barely) get the job done, and the very skilled are as likely to be working on their own personal projects in the first place, or embedding themselves so thoroughly into a company that they can personally dictate terms, and they don't need a fucking union to do that. They can just threaten they'll personally leave.

And here we get games journalism. How the fuck is this something that can be unionized in any meaningful way? This is like ass polyps getting together and threatening to leave your asshole unless you pay them. Fuck you, leave already. The only reason these useless fucking hacks even have a "job" at all is their willingness to work for pretty much nothing except "recognition" and even with that, everyone fucking hates them. They could all die in a ditch and nobody would care in the least. If they all went on strike they'd be replaced with identical blue haired fuckwits by tomorrow who would be just as willing to churn out SJW pablum for nothing.

Yeah, typically God teir unions are basically irreplaceable or will bring your city to a halt. Or are in trades so high skilled it's just not possible to replace them (that and scabs have a habit of getting limbs broken). That's why there's a ton of federal unions and mostly for jobs considered 'lower class'. This is with the exception of Actors, Directors and Writers. And again, they're basically not replaceable.

Some jobs are so high skilled they don't need unions but have professional orgs. You can't just swap out an MD or a scientist. They do not need unions because it's kind of pointless.

Then you have the middle-tier. Workers for businesses and such. White collar workers and accountants. These are not essential so you really don't have the leverage to do much. And unlike unions united in government, you'd have to lead a national movement to do so. Which is heavily and easily countered. Or if you do form one, pretty much everyone is laid off and you run a business on freelancers and non-contract basis.

And yup, that's exactly what will happen with programmers. Also culturally, some nationalities will NOT join unions or form them. They typically will use the opportunity to fuck you out of a job. And you are right. I have programmer friends who have said they will personally tell the higher ups they are not in favor of a union. You've basically got a six figure job. Most aren't going to jeopardize that.

Oh, dangerhair unions are fucking HILARIOUS. Yup, they could all be murdered and society would be a better place. There are PLENTY of unemployed Gender Studies/Communications/English majors to take their jobs. They could be culled three times over and there still would be bodies to take those jobs. It's no big secret that these people are bottom tier. If you can't get a job at any outlet, including a tabloid, you go into games journalism. It is the lowest tier, same with 'geek culture's critics. They are literally worthless and so predictable you could probably write an algorithm for their articles and no one would notice.

I want them to unionize. These outlets barely make any fucking money. It makes me laugh every time a progtard outlet unioizes everyone is IMMEDIATELY fired. It's beautiful. Happened to Buzzfeed. Happened to Vox.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

If a union is going to be any good at all, it has to be able to strike and, as importantly, be irreplaceable enough they can't just fire the lot of you and replace you with pajeets tomorrow. That means either you're so skilled that you can't be replaced, or badass enough you can literally beat the shit out of anyone who dares to scab.

And your strike has to actually matter. It has to cause things to go immediately to shit so fast that it's a huge priority to get you back to work, or you have to be able to weather how long it takes before the impact of you striking starts to hit.

This is why you have a Writers Guild for TV and why a garbage collector strike works. The Writers Guild is packed with people who are privileged enough that they can sit out an entire season and wait for their strike to take effect while ratings tank and popular shows turn to shit. They can't really stop scabbing but the kind of people who scab aren't going to do as good a job. Suffering eventually kicks in. You eventually get a deal.

And garbagemen going on strike immediately turns the city into a reeking hellhole. If you're a politician your constituents are pissed off. And if you're a garbage union, you're probably mobbed up as all fuck and anyone who scabs is getting his kneecaps broken. They have to pay you off to get you back to work. Or they'll lose their jobs.

Programmers are a ridiculously fluid population and they aren't all doing the same thing, and you can't convince them all to go on strike anyway. Many of them hate unions on principle. There is no shortage of pajeets or shitty programmers who can churn out garbage code that will (just barely) get the job done, and the very skilled are as likely to be working on their own personal projects in the first place, or embedding themselves so thoroughly into a company that they can personally dictate terms, and they don't need a fucking union to do that. They can just threaten they'll personally leave.

And here we get games journalism. How the fuck is this something that can be unionized in any meaningful way? This is like ass polyps getting together and threatening to leave your asshole unless you pay them. Fuck you, leave already. The only reason these useless fucking hacks even have a "job" at all is their willingness to work for pretty much nothing except "recognition" and even with that, everyone fucking hates them. They could all die in a ditch and nobody would care in the least. If they all went on strike they'd be replaced with identical blue haired fuckwits by tomorrow who would be just as willing to churn out SJW pablum for nothing.

Journalism in theory may work if the replacements are socially inept and offends the interviewee for just existing. As bad as Schreier and his ilk are they can hold a conversation. Give Will Usher's fanbase a job and we will be hearing news about how Kotaku has to deal with harassment suits or a "enjoy this interview because we are never talking to you again". Not to mention they would have to do work in media production and editing as well and they seem like actual neets to me.

 

[AnOminous]

Give Will Usher's fanbase a job and we will be hearing news about how Kotaku has to deal with harassment suits or a "enjoy this interview because we are never talking to you again". Not to mention they would have to do work in media production and editing as well and they seem like actual neets to me.

Usher is a complete autist supported by other similarly minded autists, so presumably he somehow is satisfying some audience desire, even if it's that of a bunch of autists. Nobody is going to mistake his blog for a serious news outlet except people determined to do so.

Most GJs aren't satisfying any need or desire at all. It's just a strange way money is flowing toward what would actually be better spent on just flat out open industry shills. Games journalists would actually be more useful if they were, in fact, just that.

 

[robobobo]

Game developers ruined all the game development jobs. So many fucking idiots were all, "Making games is the FUTURE!" and promptly went into huge debt going through college to get development training that they've oversaturated the job market and made their positions worthless. Work one to death and ten more resumes are on your desk the next morning. No wonder companies treat them like garbage, they're more expendable than janitors. Who would give a shit if they formed a union and went on strike? You could have every seat filled again in less than a week if you just fired them all and hired replacements.

 

[DoofComoose]

There was a magazine I read that did something similar, though the "second opinion" was barely a paragraph and didn't have a score. PCGamer used to have a section called Devils Advocate which I ignored back in the day. In hindsight, it was a way to get politics into a games magazine without shitting themselves. That wouldn't happen these days.


I don't watch him. The stuff I have watched has been political, though that's likely my fault for only watching his videos when he makes a fool of himself. His recent video shilling for game unions was funny because everybody was wearing the same clothes, even wearing the exact same shirt in some cases.

Yeah, typically God teir unions are basically irreplaceable or will bring your city to a halt. Or are in trades so high skilled it's just not possible to replace them (that and scabs have a habit of getting limbs broken). That's why there's a ton of federal unions and mostly for jobs considered 'lower class'. This is with the exception of Actors, Directors and Writers. And again, they're basically not replaceable.

Some jobs are so high skilled they don't need unions but have professional orgs. You can't just swap out an MD or a scientist. They do not need unions because it's kind of pointless.

Then you have the middle-tier. Workers for businesses and such. White collar workers and accountants. These are not essential so you really don't have the leverage to do much. And unlike unions united in government, you'd have to lead a national movement to do so. Which is heavily and easily countered. Or if you do form one, pretty much everyone is laid off and you run a business on freelancers and non-contract basis.

And yup, that's exactly what will happen with programmers. Also culturally, some nationalities will NOT join unions or form them. They typically will use the opportunity to fuck you out of a job. And you are right. I have programmer friends who have said they will personally tell the higher ups they are not in favor of a union. You've basically got a six figure job. Most aren't going to jeopardize that.

Oh, dangerhair unions are fucking HILARIOUS. Yup, they could all be murdered and society would be a better place. There are PLENTY of unemployed Gender Studies/Communications/English majors to take their jobs. They could be culled three times over and there still would be bodies to take those jobs. It's no big secret that these people are bottom tier. If you can't get a job at any outlet, including a tabloid, you go into games journalism. It is the lowest tier, same with 'geek culture's critics. They are literally worthless and so predictable you could probably write an algorithm for their articles and no one would notice.

I want them to unionize. These outlets barely make any fucking money. It makes me laugh every time a progtard outlet unioizes everyone is IMMEDIATELY fired. It's beautiful. Happened to Buzzfeed. Happened to Vox.

I remember looking at game journalism when I was 10 and being like "wow this is cool i wanna do this." but now I'm 12 and I know better. :^)

No but jokes aside times have changed. Games journalism has a chance to be alright but it's filled with complete assholes who act like they wanna be so important.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Second hand content.
Upper Echelon Gamers posted a video responce to a GDC talk by a Kotaku journalist. The journalist is so duluded that she thinks game characters are real people and that players are tyrants forcing them to do things against their will.
The UEC video

and the GDC talk it's a responding to. It's only 7 minutes long.

Content from the ResetEra thread. Thanks @BesadaDontStarve for this.
Original post here https://kiwifarms.net/threads/neogaf-resetera.9636/post-5061083

The short version, the "verified freelance game journalist" is happy MechWarrior 5 is Epic Game Store exclusive.

Not even the ResetEra hivemind is taking that bullshit.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

Hobbes want to stick it to the weebs because only weebs use Steam and right now there is a weebpocalyse happening

Edit: whoops. I meant to say steam.

 

[Secret Asshole]

What weeb uses EGS? All the anime games are on Steam.

Second hand content.
Upper Echelon Gamers posted a video responce to a GDC talk by a Kotaku journalist. The journalist is so duluded that she thinks game characters are real people and that players are tyrants forcing them to do things against their will.
The UEC video

and the GDC talk it's a responding to. It's only 7 minutes long.

Content from the ResetEra thread. Thanks @BesadaDontStarve for this.
Original post here https://kiwifarms.net/threads/neogaf-resetera.9636/post-5061083

The short version, the "verified freelance game journalist" is happy MechWarrior 5 is Epic Game Store exclusive.

Not even the ResetEra hivemind is taking that bullshit.

I mean he's a games journalist, of course he's dumb as dogshit and a shill for Sweeny who probably throws as much money at these whores as he possibly can, like an extra $20 bucks or a Starbucks card. And that's not the first time that 'hot take' has been used either.

 

[Wendy Carter]

Article link

Archive

Young Women Are Reclaiming The Slur ‘Egirl’

Cecilia D'Anastasio
Friday 4:22pm
Filed to: EGIRL
63.3K
1774

Ash “Aasshh.jpg” EldridgeImage: Ash Eldridge (Instagram)
Jayden “YourPrincess” Diaz is haunted by the term “egirl.” A League of Legendsstreamer competing among the top two percent of players, Diaz hasn’t been able to escape it for years—every day in Twitch chat, in League of Legends games and across social media.
“I let it really hurt me,” Diaz, 20, told Kotaku of the word, which she defines as a woman who “exploits the fact that she’s a girl to get attention online.” Diaz, with curled lengths of brown hair and a polished fashion sense, says viewers have called her a glorified camgirl throughout her career as a professional gamer. “I let it control even the role I played in League,” she explained, adding, “I used to main support, but I stopped playing support because I hated being called a ‘boosted egirl,’” or a woman whose high League rank was earned by someone else.

Jayden “YourPrincess” Diaz at Riot Games’ Rumble on the Rift event at TwitchCon in 2018.Photo: REL Hunt (Riot Games)
“Egirl” is a word that has followed female Twitch streamers and cosplayers around for years. Derogatory by nature, “egirl” is wielded by naysaying trolls to undermine a woman’s legitimacy as a true gamer and nerd based on her looks or internet popularity. In 2013, right before it hit the mainstream, one Urban Dictionary user’s early classification of egirls went, “Often seeking the attention of professional gamers. . . Live sightings of eGirls can be found at gaming LANs.” As gaming culture moved onto Twitch, and streamers garnered a modicum of micro-celebrity, public-facing girl gamers like Diaz began receiving the popular put-down and have been waging war on it ever since.
Yet over the last year, egirl has taken on another meaning. If you’re not a teenager on the short-form mobile video app TikTok, you might not have noticed. I asked Diaz to run a Google image search for “TikTok egirl,” which brought up hundreds of pictures of primly made-up teen girls sticking their tongues out in high-fashion streetwear. “What the fuck?” said Diaz, laughing in disbelief. “Dude, it’s a whole fashion trend now.”
In a recent article in the fashion and lifestyle magazine Dazed, a young girl with heavy, winged eyeliner and cropped, slime-green hair stares menacingly at the camera. Around her neck is a dog collar, and her lips and cheeks are dark red smudges. “E-girls and boys’ style is the antidote to the homogenised IG [Instagram] aesthetic,” the headline reads. The article goes on to detail how Gen-Z influencers who describe themselves as “egirls” are “mixing alternative aesthetics like thick chains, chokers, monochrome stripes, and dramatic eyeliner with softer, anime-inspired qualities like little hearts drawn on under their eyes, caked-on blush, and rainbow-coloured hair.” Leveraging beyond-their-years makeup skills and mouthing the lyrics to anime openings over short TikTok dance videos, the new generation of self-proclaimed egirls runs counter to the hardcore online gaming culture Diaz has been steeped in since 2014.

“I first heard the term ‘egirl’ on Tiktok!” said TikTok user and cosplayer Hailie Harding, who describes it as a sort of “manic pixie dream girl” aesthetic. Harding was the only TikTok star Kotaku could persuade to respond to our request for comment over e-mail, although a dozen were sent. (Most preferred to chat on Instagram). “Being an egirl is creating this perfect illusion of exactly what the internet today claims it wants: an anime loving, video game playing, sexy goth girlfriend.” She adds, “As a girl, I think it’s a fun way to express yourself.”
Gaming isn’t really necessary; and although liking anime adds some egirl cred, the new cadre of egirls is more identifiable by their edgy-kawaii look rather than their hobbies. The TikTok egirl aesthetic has become so codified that, months ago, its consistency spurred a meme recreated hundreds of thousands of times across the app: “egirl factory.” In the videos, a supposedly normal-looking girl is dragged off to an “egirl factory,” where someone outfits her in the trappings of modern egirl-ism: winged eyeliner, make-up hearts, pigtails. Then, she might do a bored, hip-swinging dance or ironically stick her tongue out like an ‘80s hair metal singer:

Female Twitch streamers who have been around the block know that Harding’s sexy, game-playing girl isn’t exactly what “the internet” has always wanted. It’s this tension that spawned the derogatory connotations of “egirl” in the first place. For more misogynistic Twitch viewers, there are arbitrary parameters for how a woman who games should behave on the internet, with the bar impossibly high for “acceptable” behavior. Trolls might argue that while grinding out levels on League of Legends and wearing thigh-high socks spells “girlfriend material,” doing that and earning money on Twitch makes someone a glorified camgirl. Self-appointed crews of vigilante boob policehave spent hours on Twitch looking for female streamers to report for clothing violations. (Yet at the same time, Sarina “Novaruu” Powell has been dressing “like a boy” on stream for about a week, and still says she sees “egirl” pop up in chat about five times a day.)
“The idea was that women anywhere near professional male gaming was gonna turn the whole thing to shit,” entrepreneur and former Twitch streamer Zoie Burgher told Kotaku of the origins of “egirl.” Burgher earned her viral online fame from playing Call of Duty in a bikini and twerking at the camera after earning a kill streak. “People were uncomfortable with the girls showing up so they had to come up with a derogatory term.”
Since the word “egirl” has been leveraged to condescend to women gaming online, women gaming online have been leveraging it for their own purposes. Burgher was one of the first Twitch streamers to turn the “egirl” into her own self-aware, money-making brand. Permanently banned from Twitch since 2016 for over-sexual content, Burgher now describes herself as the “head egirl in charge” of Luxe Modeling, a collective of self-described “egirls” who sell lewd photos and videos. “I love the term egirl because I think it’s just like the world slut,” said Burgher over the phone. “You’re not supposed to take a derogatory term to give yourself empowerment,” she explained, adding that that’s exactly what she’s doing. “I’m trying to make the gamer girl WalMart,” she added of Luxe Modeling.

Zoie Burgher streaming Call of Duty on YouTube.Image: Zoie Burgher (YouTube)
Recently, the gamer corner of the internet summited peak self-aware egirl when cosplayer Belle Delphine, in an Overwatch bikini and brandishing a pink Xbox controller, began packaging her “gamer girl bathwater” for $30 a pop. Delphine seems unapologetic about earning money from her sex appeal and gaming hobby, and as Polygon’s Patricia Hernandez noted, it wouldn’t be off-base to call Delphine a troll. “What’s curious about Delphine’s side hustle here is that it seems to be a mixture of business and next-level performance art,” Hernandez wrote. “Delphine’s work is defined by her willingness to go there. The result is as strange as it is funny.” The bathwater sold out in two days.
Although the reclamation of “egirl” isn’t new, its meaning has broadened, distinct from Twitch culture. TikTok teens’ redefinition or mainstreamification of it almost mirrors the transition from “emo” to “scene.” Emo was decidedly a lifestyle, culture and an aesthetic, while its Myspace-fueled cousin, “scene,” was mostly recognized as a sugary interpretation of the emo aesthetic. The TikTok egirl might cosplay, or might exclusively shop at Urban Outfitters; she might dye her hair pink, or wear cat ears. She might be a 4chan-shitposting social outcast, or a popular girl with the most mild edge.
There is, of course, deeper connective tissue between the “egirls” of Twitch and TikTok. Living primarily in cyberspace is one of them. In the past, actively participating in online gamer culture as a woman might have fulfilled that condition. Today, when “online” has nearly subsumed “offline” for younger generations, the “e” in egirl is more a nod to the portion of one’s identity that exists purely in cyberspace. This fixation on social media isn’t new to Gen Z, but their hyper-awareness of their online personae might be. This leads to another major throughline: others’ idea that egirls are phony and just want attention.
“E-girl literally just begging for attention,” reads the TikTok profile description of one star who goes by Gothchan666. If the name wasn’t a giveaway, clearly Gothchan666 is being ironic; it doesn’t matter whether or not she’s “begging for attention” if she’s having fun on an app with her friends and followers. In a TikTok video, Gothchan666 might pull her hair into two anime-style buns, draw black dots under her eyes, which are heavily mascaraed, and lip-sync the lyrics to some cutesy song with high-pitched vocals. If she’s wearing an outfit she likes, she might post three or four TikTok videos in it, each of which are viewed tens of thousands of times. “I only call myself an egirl because other people call me an egirl,” she explained over an Instagram direct message.

Twitch streamer Natalie “ZombiUnicorn” CasanovaImage: Natalie Casanova (Twitter)
Aside from the harassment Twitch streamers have been facing for years, the idea that egirls are online to be objectified has had consequences even for the newer generation. Earlier this month, 17-year-old Bianca Devins, widely referred to as an “egirl” on TikTok, was murdered by an unhinged man she met online named Brandon Andrew Clark. Devins and Clark attended a concert together New York city, and when she expressed interest in another man, police say, Clark cut her neck and posted images of her body on Discord. “Sorry fuckers, you’re gonna have to find someone else to orbit,” he said to her friends and fans. Investigators believe that her kiss with another man was the murderer’s motive.
Reclaimed or not, the word “egirl” is laden with dark connotations. As a younger generation’s influence begins to alter its meaning, though, women on Twitch might begin to see some changes, too, for better or for worse. More and more, women on Twitch who aren’t fighting it are gleefully enjoying the new toothlessness of the term. “I think the term ‘egirl’ is past being an insult now,” said Twitch streamer Natalie “ZombiUnicorn” Casanova over e-mail. Lately, she’s seeing the word “thot” more instead. “If someone tried to use [egirl] as an insult toward me I’d just laugh and be like ‘Ahh yes, egirl Zombi aka the online version of me versus IRL Zombi when I actually go outside.’”

I'm sorry @Desire Lines for the autism following this, you know I love you.

 

[Keystone]

1: No they aren't
2: lol Kotaku